Italien, Distriktskonferensen, en Resa till Kungsbacka och Sankta Luciasdagen

It seems that this online journal thing has turned somewhat into a monthly/month and a half report . I'm not sure if it'll stay that way...but that's what it's looking like at the moment. And let me tell you, a whole hell of a lot can happen in a month's time. Take for example this last month. As you can tell from the title of this entry (Italy, the District Conference, a Trip to Kungsbacka and St. Lucia's Day), I've been very busy. So, let's cut the small chat (I find myself saying to myself) and start in...(and I'm very sorry that this is so long, but if you actually want to know about my life, then I hope that you'll just hunker down and read it and I hope it's a slight bit interesting).

I believe that the first major thing that has happened since the last update was my class' trip to Milan, Italy. As I know my entries can get pretty lengthy and, to some, slightly boring, I'll try and cut down on unnecessary details and comments, etc. So, yeah, Milan...We arrived the 11th of November around 8:00 in the evening and were picked from the central station by our Italian partners. This was a trip with our English class to a partner school we have down in Milan, so we go and stay with a student for a week, then they'll come and stay with us in April or sometime, I'm not exactly sure when. So, we were all picked up by our partners and then taken back to their houses. My host family there was so warming and welcoming and Federico's (my Italian partner) mom gave me a big hug when I first walked in the door and had a huge feast of really good Italian food waiting. After dinner, Federico and I went to the disco and met some of his friends, came home pretty late and went right to bed; I was so tired!

Federico and I on my last night in Italy.

On Sunday we didn't do so much. We slept late, then Federico, his mom Luisa and I sat around talking about Oregon and the US and why I'm in Sweden, etc. Basically a good get-to-know-you time. We then took the subway into the center of Milan and met a group of Italians and their Swedes and just wandered around, looking in shops and getting to know eachother. On monday we all met at the school and all us Swedes were broken up into groups then assigned classrooms to go and watch in on. We then had lunch at the school and played a volleyball match; Swedes vs. Italians...and I'm happy to say that the Swedes pulled through and we won...no thanks to me however :) Tuesday we went to an art museum called Pinacoteca di Brera where we had an english guide, though I could hardly understand her with her accent, so I'm not sure how well the Swedes faired with it. We had lunch at a close-by university then went a had a chance to look around the famous La Scala opera house (which my host mom in Sweden was very jealous of). Following this we walked to the Duomo and took the hundreds of stairs up to the roof where we had a great view of the surrounding city.

A distance shot of the Duomo. This day was pretty foggy, though we never got rained on.

A statue of one of the kings of Milan in the center square in front of the Duomo.

That evening the entire group met at this place called something like 'Il Cavollo' which is a social demonstration center similar to Christiania in Copenhagen (though much smaller as Christiania is more of a neighborhood and Il Cavallo is just a few buildings) where the locals have sort of taken it over and there's quite a bit of violence and drugs...But, since we were there, they sort of cleared the place out or something...I'm not really sure. Either way, we all met there and had dinner, then walked to a bowling alley and bowled the night away.

In front of Il Cavallo. You can see some of the massive amounts graffiti in the background. The entire area surrounding the place had graffiti everywhere.

Wednesday morning we got a tour of Castello Sforzesco, the old castle of Milan where the king used to control the surrounding region from. The castle also had an art museum inside, so we had a look at that as well. To be honest, I was incredibly tired and hungry (fact: Italians eat absolutly NOTHING for breakfast. Every morning we had a few cookies or some cake with milk for breakfast...lemme tell ya, that is not fuel for the day! Thus we were always starving when it came to be lunch time, which is never before 2:00) that day so all of it kind of went over my head.

Castello Sforzesco. It was really pretty on the outside, but on the inside they were busy doing a bunch of constrution, thus not so glamorous.

After finally eating we took a bus to the Instituto Europeo del Design, one of Milan's leading fashion design schools and got a tour and a little fashion show. I thought it was pretty interesting and I was surprised at how much that goes into fashion design to be honest. Thursday was the day that we traveled to Venice. It was strange being back there again and I do believe that is one city that you never forget; it was just amazing the second time as the first. They basically just let us wander free and we only had to meet back up at a certain time, a time which my friend Julia and I were late for because we kind of got lost, though I'm really glad that we did because we got to see some of the more residential area, of which I thought was much more beautiful and exciting to see where people actually live in Venice. We of course saw the typical Venician things (the Bridge of Sighs, St. Mark's Cathedral, the Realto Bridge) and before we knew it our day was up and we had to take the train back to Milan (it's about a three hour train ride), arriving around 10:00 (at which point we proceded to eat dinner, which isn't at all an unusal time according to an Italien's internal clock).

This was one of the really nice areas that Julia and I found when we got lost.
My entire Swedish class in St. Mark's square.

Friday was our last full day there and it was set aside for us to do some shopping, or a lot of shopping in some people's case. That evening we all met at this pizzaria/latin dance hall that was about 10 minutes outside of town for a final meal together. That evening everyone was both happy and sad at the same time, knowing that we were heading home the next day. Saturday came as we all knew it would and we all got up pretty early to meet back up at the Central Station to take a bus back to the airport. Our good-byes were sad, but it was comforting to know that we would all see eachother again in just a few months time.Me, Amanda, Karin, Pontus, Frida and Julia. Some of my best friends here in Sweden on our last night at the pizzaria.

The next major event following Italy was the District Conference for my Rotary district here in Sweden. The organizers of the conference set aside around twenty to thirty minutes for us exchange students to give a little performance...and boy oh boy did we give a performance. One of the weekends that I was in Italy all the other exchangers met up in a town called Ulricehamn to put together what it was we would entertain the crowd with. They came up with a song and dance routine that blew some minds, lemme tell ya. We first walked in holding the flags from our respective countries, then a little dance to some Miss America type music. Then we all took turns introducing eachother in pairs in Swedish. After that we had a little skit that went through all the various typical Swedish things that we'd encountered so far (singing and dancing around the Mid-summer Pole, fikaing, eating meat balls, talking about weather, etc.) and the end of the skit transitions into another dance, this time to the ABBA song 'Dancing Queen' (for those of you who don't know, which is shameful because you should, ABBA is one of the most famous things to come out of Sweden, except of course for IKEA).

That evening was a very fine and expensive dinner and dance for those who attended the District Conference (and who wanted to pay for it). Luckily for us exchange students, we got in for free :) This was very fun and we all got dressed up in our formal clothing and had a grand 'ol time.

The whole group of us: Jill, me and Chris in back. Ani, Chloe, Shannon, Emily, Sam, Sian, Ashton, Stéphanie, Hallie and Tim in front. (Yui from Japan wasn't able to come because she was busy doing something with her host family at the time).

We were all given assigned seats and it just so happened that the lady I ended up sitting next to was an English teacher from Kungsbacka, the biggest town between Varberg and Göteborg with about 70,000. We got to talking and come to find out that her English class had just finished reading a section about the Oregon Trail. She wondered if I'd be willing to come and meet up with her at some point and have a little talk with her class about the US, Oregon, etc. We exchanged contact information and left it at that. The remainder of the evening went really well. After eating our very fancy dinner and dessert, they cleared away the tables to make room for dancing and the live band. I do believe that a great time was had by all.

Getting back to that lady that I met at the District Conference dinner...Her name was Lille-Mor (which when translated to English literally means little-mother...she told me to just call her Lille) Arnäs and a few days after the Conference she gave me a ring to set up a day for me to make a trip into Kungsbacka. I took the train on a Monday up to Kungsbacka where she met me and we went to Kungsbackas Gymnasium (if you all remember correctly, a Gymnasium is roughtly equivilent to an American high school, not somewhere that you play basketball). She showed me around the school, we fikaed then I gave two presentations about the US and why I'm here in Sweden. The first was fast and spur of the moment because we met one of her follow teachers and she asked if I could come and talk for around ten minutes or something. The one for Lille-Mor however was around an hour and I used my Powerpoint presentation that I had made for my speech for Rotary. After I was finished she treated me to lunch and dropped me off at the train station after paying me back for the cost of the train tickets. It all went really well (despite the computer's projector not working in the beginning) and I think I might be heading back up there at some point to talk to some more classes and lead some discussion groups or something. It'll be fun!

Well, I've got one more slightly major thing to mention and that would be St. Lucia Day, the 13th of December. St. Lucia Day is not an official holiday in Sweden, but is celebrated in almost every town around the country, though I'm not exactly sure what the reason for it is. The idea is that she goes around various places with a wreath and candles in her hair, dressed in a bright white dress singing Christmas carols and bringing light and happniness with her on the very dark winter days (and damn it's dark here...it gets light around 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning, then the sun goes back down and it's completely dark about 3:00 or 3:30). She also has other girls and boys that follow her (Lucia's angels and sjärngossar or 'star boys') who sing the carols with her. Every town and school always a Lucia Competition between any girl who wishes to try out which involves having an interview and then singing a song for the judges. They then come up with a group of finalists who are voted on and the girl who wins is crowned Lucia and the other girls are her angels. In Varberg, the Lucia competition went on for most of November and in the beginning of December they announced and crowned Lucia. Since then, Lucia and her angels have been going around to various public places and singing and bringing ginger snaps. On the Sunday before the 13th there was a big parade and celebration to display Varberg's Lucia and angels to the town. The girls road in horse drawn carrages and had a marching band, etc. Then all six of them went up on stage and sung carols for the crowd. It was very nice and kind of exciting to witness a completely new holiday.

Varberg's Lucia in the middle with her six angels to the left and right (for some reason Varberg didn't have sjärngossar, though I don't know why).

A typical Swedish candle of my host moms set out on St. Lucia day to celebrate the occation.

On the eve of Lucia there is always a big party in each town to welcome in St. Lucia (called Lussevacken) and in Varberg, for the students of my school, there is always a huge disco-type thing at a local dance club called Oskars. It started around 7:00 with a pre-party at one of my class-mates' houses and then Oskars didn't close until 1:00 in the morning, so I was damn tired the next day and haven't really recovered as of yet (this weekend will be nice, because I can sleep in long!).

Well, this concludes another episode of my saga here in Sweden. I hope you all are enjoying reading my adventures and I know that they're long. But! I figure I should try and include as much as possible because this is sort of another perspective from my personal journal on my life here and I'll want to remember every minute (plus all of this is going to go together for my Senior Project when I come home...and I figure that it's easier to do a lot of it now in small bits than a huge chunk later).

If I don't update before then, I hope you all have a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year or as they say in Swedish: God Jul och Gott Nytt År!